Day 17: A Simple Revision
Clack.
"Here, eat up. And you—come with me a second."
The woman who set the fried rice in front of Cheon Seo-ah took Gwanghwi and vanished somewhere.
Grrrroooowl.
It was only frozen fried rice microwaved back to life, yet she was so ravenous that the mere aroma set her stomach roaring.
"Thank you for the meal."
With a little bow aimed at no one in particular, Cheon Seo-ah scooped up a generous spoonful.
"Nom."
Chew, chew.
One bite. Two. Three.
With every mouthful the amount of rice that actually made it past her lips shrank, until at last—
"It's awful…."
She had barely managed a few spoonfuls before her brow furrowed and she set the utensil down.
Even for frozen fried rice, how could anything taste this bad?
Or maybe this was simply average. Everything Cheon Seo-ah had eaten since returning to Earth had been prepared by top-tier chefs or crafted with obsessive care by master patissiers. Her palate had recalibrated itself to that standard, and ordinary freezer food might simply be beyond her now.
Still.
"I should at least finish it, considering the thought… right?"
Murmuring in a trembling voice, she steeled her expression and picked the spoon up again.
Meanwhile, the moment the door clicked shut behind the woman who had brought the rice—Kang Ye-seul—she turned on Gwanghwi.
"You. What the hell is that?"
"Th-that is…."
Faced with the question, Gwanghwi—real name Jin Yu-ri—found her mouth refusing to open. After everything she had done up to this point, even a dozen mouths would not have been enough excuses.
Yet…
But her face is way too serious for that.
Jin Yu-ri sneaked a glance at Kang Ye-seul; incomprehension flickered in her eyes. Looking after girls like Cheon Seo-ah was nothing new. She had done it several times already, and each time Ye-seul had grumbled on the surface while quietly helping as her sidekick.
Right now, though, Ye-seul's expression was far past serious. It was the look of someone who had seen something she should never have seen—sheer terror.
Ye-seul was trying to hide it, of course, but the two of them had spent more than ten years together. Catching something like that was second nature by now.
"What's wrong with you? Your face is scaring me."
"You seriously don't know what that is?"
"Stop calling her 'that.' If she heard you, how hurt do you think she'd be—!"
"Jin Yu-ri!"
Kang Ye-seul barked the full name.
Jin Yu-ri blinked in mild shock. The only times Ye-seul ever used her full name were when she was furious over a major screw-up, or…
…when I've made a truly catastrophic mistake.
Yet nothing about the present situation warranted that level of anger. Which left only one possibility.
Jin Yu-ri realized she had committed some enormous blunder—yet she still could not fathom what it was.
All she had done was stay out late focused on hero work, then run into Cheon Seo-ah on the way back to the dorms and brought her home. Was coming in late the problem?
No. Hero work regularly kept her out until these hours; sometimes she pulled all-nighters. Ye-seul would never explode over something like that now.
So…
"Is bringing Seo-ah here the problem?"
"You—!"
The name slipped out of Jin Yu-ri's mouth with such natural ease that Kang Ye-seul's eyes flew wide. From that reaction alone Yu-ri understood exactly why her full name had been used.
So it really was bringing Seo-ah. But why?
She still could not understand. The Seo-ah she had met was nothing more than a pitiful runaway with nowhere to go—not a villain, not even an ability user. Just an ordinary runaway girl. Helping kids like that was not a one- or two-time thing. Why was Ye-seul this angry?
When Jin Yu-ri simply stared, Kang Ye-seul let out a deep sigh and thrust her smartphone forward.
"You skipped the meeting last week, right?"
"Last week…? Oh. Yeah. I was fighting a villain. Wanted to go, couldn't."
"Hah. Exactly. That's why you didn't recognize her."
"What are you talking about?"
"Just look at the screen."
Faced with Ye-seul's rigid expression, Jin Yu-ri had no choice but to look at the phone she was holding out.
The display showed materials distributed by the Hero Association. Alongside Cheon Seo-ah's face was…
SUBJECT:Unidentified Female Villain
CRIME:Heart Devouring (Great Sin / Absolute Taboo)
STATUS:Incarcerated in Tartaros → Extracted by the Proxy personally
NOTE:Tartaros warden confirmed as Proxy's subordinate during extraction
Possibility raised that subject possesses the same ability as the Heart Devourer. Proxy's direct intervention supports high-threat classification.
"Wh-what is this?"
A villain who had committed the great sin and absolute taboo of Heart Devouring?
Imprisoned in Tartaros, only for the Proxy to personally move and break her out?
And in the process it was revealed that the warden of Tartaros had actually been one of the Proxy's subordinates?
"Is this… real?"
Jin Yu-ri asked in a stiff voice. Kang Ye-seul gave a heavy nod.
"Haaah—."
Jin Yu-ri exhaled a long, deep breath.
The girl she had taken for an ordinary runaway had, it turned out, committed the atrocity of Heart Devouring—and she was important enough that one of the absolute rulers of the Illuminati, the Proxy, had personally rescued her.
There was even speculation that she possessed the same ability as the Heart Devourer, which was why she had performed the act in the first place. If the Proxy himself had intervened, that theory was all but confirmed.
Or perhaps the girl outside the door was the terrifying Heart Devourer's own daughter. Maybe the Heart Devourer, unable to move for some reason, had begged the Proxy to save her. That possibility could not be dismissed either.
"I'm going insane."
With her thoughts in chaos, Jin Yu-ri scratched the back of her head.
What was she supposed to do?
How was she supposed to handle this?
She was a hero—Gwanghwi. Ranked 8th in South Korea, an idol adored by the public.
But…
Is that kid really the same person as this villain?
The face matched. No—it was identical, as if it were the very same person. The clothes were the same. Even those dead eyes that carried a faint air of ennui were the same.
Still.
"Is that girl really a villain…?"
Jin Yu-ri murmured, still unable to accept it.
She was one of the few Grade 1 heroes in the entire country. Being Grade 1 meant she was a Grade 1 ability user, and ability users of that caliber could usually sense, simply by looking at someone, whether they possessed an ability and roughly what grade it was.
Yet…
I felt absolutely nothing from that girl.
If she truly shared an ability with the Heart Devourer, Jin Yu-ri should have noticed. She had not—not from the first meeting until now. Not a single trace of an ability.
If Cheon Seo-ah did possess an ability and Jin Yu-ri had still failed to detect it, only one explanation remained: the girl was so vastly stronger that Yu-ri simply could not sense her.
Jin Yu-ri had experienced that before—close at hand with the thirteen absolute powerhouses of the Hero Association, and farther away with the nine rulers of the Illuminati.
Did Seo-ah truly stand on the same level as those monsters?
While she stood frozen in thought, a voice suddenly reached her ear.
"What are you going to do?"
Jin Yu-ri jumped and looked at Kang Ye-seul. Ye-seul already had the Emergency Call button glowing on her phone screen.
Jin Yu-ri knew that button well. One press would summon every hero in the vicinity. Precisely because of that power, it was not for casual use—only Grade 1 or higher heroes, or when a Grade 2 or higher villain appeared.
Cheon Seo-ah's official villain rank had not yet been assigned, but anyone who performed Heart Devouring and then received a personal jailbreak from Tartaros by the Proxy could easily be rated Grade 2 or above. Even a mere sidekick like Kang Ye-seul more than met the conditions to press it.
So Jin Yu-ri said,
"First we confirm. Yeah—let's check. You never know, right? She might just be a doppelgänger-level lookalike."
Kang Ye-seul stared at her with heavy eyes.
She understood perfectly why Yu-ri was reacting this way. She wanted to deny it. A girl roughly the same age as her little sister who had died long ago—that this girl had committed Heart Devouring. That she might even possess the same ability as the Heart Devourer who had killed that sister. Yu-ri simply could not accept it.
After a long silent look, Kang Ye-seul finally let out a helpless sigh.
"Promise me one thing."
"W-what?"
"If that kid outside the door really is a villain…."
Ye-seul trailed off, but Jin Yu-ri already knew what she meant. She nodded heavily.
With their agreement sealed, the two of them opened the firmly shut door—
"Ah, right. I've been cooped up in Daematcheon for so long that I completely forgot that possibility existed."
—and found Cheon Seo-ah already standing there.
She was looking at the smartphone in Kang Ye-seul's hand. Jin Yu-ri forced her trembling voice to work.
"Can I ask just one thing, Seo-ah?"
"Please do."
"Really… are you truly the villain who performed Heart Devouring?"
Cheon Seo-ah nodded with an innocent little smile. Jin Yu-ri opened her mouth with difficulty.
And to that question Seo-ah answered,
"That's right. But it's strange, isn't it? I only ate a single heart, yet I never expected everyone to react this violently. What on earth has that child been doing on Earth? Well… the fact that he is still a 'pitiful child' doesn't change, though."
Haaah—.
At Cheon Seo-ah's answer Jin Yu-ri released a deep sigh.
At the same instant—
Flash—!
Brilliant light exploded from her entire body.
Jin Yu-ri's hero name was Gwanghwi—Radiance—identical to the name of her ability. By dictionary definition it meant bright, beautiful, dazzling light, or light itself. True to the name, she could command light in its pure form.
Because she still possessed the vessel of a human body she could not travel at light-speed, yet she could casually break the sound barrier. With the overwhelming thermal energy contained in light itself she could erase an opponent without leaving a single trace.
Some people even speculated that the only reason Jin Yu-ri remained officially a Grade 2 hero was that she simply found the promotion exam to Grade 1 too bothersome.
The moment she unleashed her ability, Kang Ye-seul did not hesitate either. She moved to press the Emergency Call button glowing on her screen.
No—she tried to.
Just as Jin Yu-ri, wreathed in radiant light, lunged toward Cheon Seo-ah, and just as Kang Ye-seul's finger descended toward the button—
the world stopped.
It was not a metaphor.
The instant Cheon Seo-ah brought her hands together in a sharp clap, the world drained into ash-gray and everything halted.
Every movement of the living and the non-living.
The flow of air. The rotation and revolution of the Earth.
Beyond that, the motion of the planets and the currents of the universe itself.
The very function of the dimension called the solar system, to which Earth belonged, came to a complete stop.
In that frozen world the only being who could still move was—
"Hmm. What should I do…."
Inside the stopped world Cheon Seo-ah murmured while gazing at the smartphone clutched in Kang Ye-seul's hand.
Should she reverse time completely to before she had performed Heart Devouring?
No—that would be far too bothersome. Not impossible, but rewinding the time of an entire dimension was a considerable nuisance even for her.
In that case…
"I'll just comfortably 'revise' it."
With a satisfied little hum and a nod, Cheon Seo-ah extended her index finger and began to scribble lazily through the empty air.
Each time her finger traced a line, a sharp ziiip rang out, and one particular "fact" that had spread across Earth was rewritten.
The revised fact was this:
A few days earlier a villain who performed Heart Devouring in Seoul had worn the appearance of a young girl—
yet no one knew that girl's face.
Cheon Seo-ah's "revision" did not merely touch human memories; it also rewrote the records etched into computers, smartphones, and every other data repository.
With that done—
"Now no one will know that I am the one who performed Heart Devouring."
Smiling in satisfaction, she clapped her hands once more. The ash-gray world recovered its original colors and began to flow normally again.
At the same moment—
"Wh-wha—! Uwah! Stop!"
Jin Yu-ri, still wrapped in radiance and charging straight at Cheon Seo-ah, let out a panicked cry and abruptly twisted her path aside.
Kang Ye-seul, phone still in hand, shouted in shock,
"Jin Yu-ri! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"